EPTIf you want skill customization, play Last Epoch. It blows D4 out of the water so hard it's not even funny.
Diablo IV - Page 81
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HolydaKing
21254 Posts
If you want skill customization, play Last Epoch. It blows D4 out of the water so hard it's not even funny. | ||
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Latham
9558 Posts
On June 06 2023 03:17 [Phantom] wrote: I'll expand on some of the things I've read: Basically Skills themselves are very bad, and Diablo 3 customization with skills was better as they had more meaningful options to customize them. Runes were more impactful. Basically once you unlock a skill the changes to it are very small for the most part on most skills. Then the itemization. It seems a lot of the power for the characters is in legendaries. Which is good to an extent, but basically makes it luck dependent on whether you get what you need or not. Since the game scales with you, and the skill tree upgrades aren't meaningful, if you don't get lucky drops that happen to boost the skills you need/want you're out of luck. So the progression is basically tied to the items. Also, if you want to change builds, you can't, because it's tied to items. So you need to find items from zero all over again, and it seems it's expensive to change item abilities. The items stats themselves are just damage and defense from what I've read,so no elemental protection of a specific type,or not bonus damage vs certain type of enemies etc. So the only option is to focus on crit chance. Yes, the skill tree is laughable, really. I'd say 75% of player power is locked behind gear, 20% behind the paragon board and about 5% in the actual skill tree. It's a mongoloid, bastard son of Diablo 3 & Diablo 2, but without any of their strengths. In Diablo 2 you could make builds that got CARRIED by skills (skelly necro, frozen orb sorc etc.) because of synergies of skills (frozen orb got more powerful as you put in more skills in frozen bolt and frozen blast) and because you could put in 20 skill point to make them powerful, that could complete content naked. In Diablo 3 they did away with skill levels, but instead you unlocked all skills in a tier, at every breakpoint (1, 2, 4, 9, 14, 19) and then you could further customize them with runes that drastically changed how the skills played out. To that in Diablo 3 you had every season a "flavour of the month" overpowered set to chase that would multiply the damage of a skill by... 750% or even more. These rotated to keep the game feeling fresh. In Diablo 4 they let you level a skill to 5 yourself and you get a few +skill/tier affixes on items. Then you get a choice of 2 additional effects for that skill, that are mutually exclusive. So not only does your character feel weak with only 5 skill points in a skill, you also only get 1 meaningful upgrade to said skill. Worst of both worlds and the illusion of a choice. Items are a little bit convoluted, but maybe not fundamentally one-dimensional. It's obvious on weapon you'd want to go HARD on damage affixes that suit you, but you have A LOT of different affix rolls to choose from. You have the universal: +Damage% +Crit Damage% +Crit Chance% +Main Stat +'Core' Damage% (this is your class resource spender like Whirlwind or Ice Shards) +[Element] Damage% +IAS% (attack speed) Then you have other damage rolls such as: +Damage% to vulnerable enemies +Damage% to stunned enemies +Damage% to crowed controlled enemies +Damage% versus W, +Damage% with X, +Damage% against Y, +Damage% while Z; etc. In addition, some classes like Lucky Hits such as Rogues or Sorceresses. This basically helps trigger secondary effects such as slowed/frozen, poisoned, bleeding etc. DoTs & effects As for defensive items (head, torso, gloves, pants, boots) you get the basic, vanilla: +Main Stat +Armor(%) +Resistances% (All res or individual ones) +Life +Thorns very low +skill modifiers (like +1/+2 firewall) and other useful stats like what I'm personally after on my gear: Cooldown Reduction% Manacost Reduction% and more. Basically, there are A LOT of moving parts here. But of course you want the bare minimum of the defensive ones to stay alive, and get away with as many damage modifiers as possible. My problem with all of this is they took Diablo 3 as the base game for Diablo 4, cut out some parts and inserted Diablo 2 parts in those places for nostalgia's sake but without any thought, and now we have this visually stunning albeit slightly mongoloid game on our hands. Cutting out what worked for Diablo 3 was akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, for better or worse. The flaws run deep into the very core of the design philosophy of this game. This was built from the ground up like this, don't expect this to change. Now, is it worth 70/90/100 $? Depends on you. It's an ARPG, will probably be very replayable with seasons. You'll most likely get more than 2 hours of playtime for every dollar you spend. All I can say is I've always been satisfied with the money I spent on Diablo games in the long run. Usually hundreds of hours of fun(Diablo 1 & 3), if not thousands (Diablo 2). Is the battle pass/monetization concerning? Yes, but I can't see myself ever buying cosmetics or extra crafting items in a game like this. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44050 Posts
On June 06 2023 03:17 [Phantom] wrote: I'll expand on some of the things I've read: Basically Skills themselves are very bad, and Diablo 3 customization with skills was better as they had more meaningful options to customize them. Runes were more impactful. Basically once you unlock a skill the changes to it are very small for the most part on most skills. I wouldn't say the skills themselves are very bad - a lot of them synergize very well, and a lot of them are reasonably creative and fun - but I agree with you that there isn't a ton of additional customization after picking a skill (generally there are about 2-3 small ways to customize each skill within that skill's mini-branch on the skill tree, which is obviously more than in Diablo 2, but perhaps less customization than in other games). Then the itamization. It seems a lot of the power for the characters is in legendaries. Which is good to an extent, but basically makes it luck dependant on wether you get what you need or not. Thankfully, the opposite is true in D4. It's less luck-dependent than in D2 or D3, because of two awesome improvements to how we can find and use the legendary / hard-to-find affixes: You can obtain those affixes based on dungeon completion too, as literal rewards (and you can figure out which dungeon earns you the affix you're looking for), not just based on a lucky drop from having sufficient magic find; and you can take the affix from one item and use it as an additional affix for another item. Here's a spoiler-free video explaining these item-customizability concepts: + Show Spoiler + Also. I'm worried regarding the story. Valid concerns there, certainly. The story didn't blow my mind. Gorgeous cinematics though, as expected from Blizzard. But I don't trust Blizzard anymore after all the controversies, Overwatch, layoffs and high turnovers... I like diablo and enjoyed my time in the beta but it seems that even though the core game seems fun there is a lot of shit on top. Badly designed systems and greed. Also valid concerns. If the recent/current state of Blizzard warrants a boycott from you on principle, then that's absolutely your prerogative and you should speak with your wallet. That's a slightly different conversation than whether or not I think the game itself is good, but both of those topics are ones that every potential customer should consider before buying anything. | ||
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jhgjgh
1 Post
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Latham
9558 Posts
On June 06 2023 06:21 jhgjgh wrote: *mod edit* Thanks broseph, I don't mind. I still think the game is very fun and eventually I'll get enough hours in to justify those 90$. But you do you sweetheart, keep being broody & edgy by making alt accounts and look on as other people are having fun. | ||
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FueledUpAndReadyToGo
Netherlands30548 Posts
One more hour and I can finally see for myself. Or servers explode. | ||
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andrewlt
United States7702 Posts
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Manit0u
Poland17237 Posts
Pretty good summary I think. Advising people not to play HC at the moment  | ||
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KrillinFromwales
51 Posts
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Manit0u
Poland17237 Posts
On June 06 2023 11:23 KrillinFromwales wrote: I think it's not too bad. The world is pretty expansive, and if you're a completionist you might get a kinda MMO feel. The cellars and side quests don't really drum up my enthusiasm. Skill system is definitely a major downer as it feels like most interesting stuff happens pretty quickly. The auto-leveling monsters are alright but not great. Doesn't feel like you progress much or get stronger with time because the monsters are gaining stats equal to yours. Personally I think D3 set a good precedent with the pacing of fights and attacks. Ultimates feel kinda pointless. You're waiting like a minute to press a button and get an effect which doesn't do much. Would definitely like to see my companion return and sorta missing shoulders and bracers. Never really found autoscaling mobs to be a good mechanic. Autoscaling according to nearby player count is fine, scaling with level bad. If they wanted to keep the MMO feel they could instead do what GW2 did and scale players to the zone not the other way around? This has worked well for Guild Wars since it allows you to still have some challenge within the low level zones (as all the level, stats and the gear get scaled down) and you see players everywhere thanks to that, with maxed out toons roaming the newbie zones to complete some quests, hunt bosses, help newcomers etc. | ||
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liuoijkh
1 Post
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Creager
Germany1889 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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evilfatsh1t
Australia8614 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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Manit0u
Poland17237 Posts
On June 06 2023 21:04 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: https://twitter.com/BlizzardCS/status/1666051780222808067 Blizzard: The login issues have been resolved. Thanks for your patience, sorry for any inconvenience. Players: Why is my character deleted and all my pre-order bonuses gone?! My characters are still deleted.. My character is gone!! Level 47 how is possible? 50 hours of gameplay gone Yall need to address the pre-order and character deleted issue!!! They havent though lol, our characters arent showing up lol. WOW... | ||
Excalibur_Z
United States12235 Posts
On June 06 2023 17:15 Manit0u wrote: Never really found autoscaling mobs to be a good mechanic. Autoscaling according to nearby player count is fine, scaling with level bad. If they wanted to keep the MMO feel they could instead do what GW2 did and scale players to the zone not the other way around? This has worked well for Guild Wars since it allows you to still have some challenge within the low level zones (as all the level, stats and the gear get scaled down) and you see players everywhere thanks to that, with maxed out toons roaming the newbie zones to complete some quests, hunt bosses, help newcomers etc. I don't own D4 but my understanding is that they've established a middle ground. In D3 enemies always scaled to your level (which did indeed dilute power fantasy) but in D4 they scale to your level up to a maximum for the zone (unless it's a dungeon I believe?). | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17237 Posts
Grim Dawn constellation system, Last Epoch skills having their own skill trees, D2 itemization and leveling. Get this all together and you have a recipe for a banger ARPG with insane potential and replay value. | ||
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andrewlt
United States7702 Posts
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HolydaKing
21254 Posts
On June 06 2023 23:28 Manit0u wrote: Regardless it's still pretty baffling how Blizz managed to kinda screw it up. Sure, they're not great at inventing their own stuff any more but in the past decade or so they were pretty good at borrowing stuff that works from other games. I have no idea why they ended up with this bland itemization/progression systems when there are good examples to be found elsewhere? Grim Dawn constellation system, Last Epoch skills having their own skill trees, D2 itemization and leveling. Get this all together and you have a recipe for a banger ARPG with insane potential and replay value. Nono, just realize you are not the target audience (as I did). They do not want good game that is complex in what you can do, they want a game that appeals to the masses, so it has to be easy to understand and master, visually stunning, have a story that you want to complete and be overall fun for a while. Last Epoch and games like Grim Dawn (and PoE) are games that are made with the idea that you can make hundreds of individual characters that are a completely different experience. If Blizzard is clever, they add the things you mentioned in later seasons, which is entirely possible. | ||
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